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Plato banished poets from his ideal Republic but nevertheless he crowned them first. By doing so he acknowledged poetry's well-deserved prestige but also its danger. For poets are more tempted, because more responsive to feelings, to exaggerate or sometimes even to falsify in their attempts to weave an emotional atmosphere and create an influential effect upon the reader by using metaphors and figures of speech. Of course that would not mean a deliberate falsification but rather a carelessness about truth. Unfortunately, truth was Plato's primary value. Take the famous and beautiful line: "A rose-red city, half as old as time." Note the exaggeration concerning time.

-- Notebooks Category 14: The Arts in Culture > Chapter 4 : Reflections On Specific Arts > # 56